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"POP" CULTURE, METAPHYSICAL DISGUST, AND THE
NEW VULGARIANS
Max Kozloff
Among labels which catch on and hold their place in the art world, but which were never deemed adequate to begin with, the term "Neo-Dada" is a lowly one. Before the "Neo" had even been defined properly, a number of painters have laughed it into obsolescence, even while they thrive on the absurdities and confusions which gave it birth. The city has been playing uneasy host to a group of such artists having first shows this winter - artists who come on calm and clean but iconoclastic. Naturally they would be among the first to disclaim that they form a group. And indeed, since they were spread out and unknown to each other, this would seem to be historically true, as it is stylistically obvious. The very fact, however, that they form a grass roots movement gives authenticity to their common concern with the problems of the commercial image, popular culture, and metaphysical disgust.
Upon these themes, too, they superimpose an inquiry into the nature of the creative act, and the existence of the work as object and /or vision.
Particularly controversial was the show of Jim Dine at the Martha Jackson Gallery. Yet no one has remarked clearly enough that one of his most provocative gestures was to return to easel painting, not reject it. Having started his career with his celebrated "happenings" - that is, theatrical events created within a totally invented environment, Dine found himself at the farthest edge of that development (1950's) which sought to break into the spectator's space.
How significant, therefore, to see him next not only embrace the durability of paint, but to engage particularly in those issues which finally allow a considered judgment of his work: the bringing to bear of insights from a completely separate métier into the pictorial context. Physical vestiges of the stage still remain, to be sure, in a platform supporting a black derby, or certain stage-set colours, but only to be translated into a different language. Similarly, Roy Lichtenstein (Castelli) and Robert Watts (Grand Central Moderns) come to painting originally from engineering, James Rosenquist (Green), from billboard work, and Peter Saul (Frumkin) might just as well be a refugee from the funnies.
Yet, however varied their previous experience, the point is that they inject something of its mentality into art, which act is a sign of their conservatism as much as it is a token of their ambition. It is almost unnecessary to add that they mostly consider themselves to be interested in form, and that they compose and execute in no manner contrary to their more conventional colleagues.
Hence, to explain the shock with which they burst into your consciousness, you cannot accuse them either of using outrageous materials or of abusing the time honored rectangle of pigment. (With the exception of Oldenburg and Watts.) Rather, they operate by a metaphor which they know very well would be quite ridiculous for us to accept: that their work is not what it assumes itself to be - the actual thing, or something terribly close to it. Here I find myself disagreeing with Lawrence
Alloway, a propos Dine, when he insists that "the object is present as literally and emphatically as possible." Such literalness would be too crass, even for artists who are rather complete vulgarians in other respects. In the same way, Dine does not show mystery to be unavoidable, as Alloway suggests, but that recognition of fraud is inevitable. Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, and Saul may set up an illusion, but only so that they may finally undeceive the viewer. I suspect they accomplish this on two levels.
The first is by taking advantage of the proximity of abstract painting. These artists have a field day with the modern eye that has educated itself agonisingly to see no associations whatsoever in the physical presence of the painting.
Now, suddenly, blatantly familiar images from reality ram themselves home, but, as distinct from those in merely representational or story painters, so magnified as to require reinterpretation all over again. (Oldenburg, Dine, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist.) Furthermore, the colours are not those of the real objects, but illustrative of them - those hues we pass by without self-reproach in catalogues and comic strips, but which seem much more nastily arbitrary in the new works than the completely arbitrary chromatics of abstract art. (Dine most successfully evolves a whole new palette from this idea, while Peter Saul's colours have a remarkable bathroom vitality.) In addition, an artist like Lichtenstein turns the whole abstract-representational argument inside out by demonstrating that the recognizable is not necessarily communicative at all, and that it is just as difficult to abide the known, as it once was to take the unknown seriously. Here is a pretty slap in the face of both philistines and cognoscenti alike.
The second twist is more fantastic. With Rosenquist, for example, the entire concept of the artist creating an image from his inner, or the outer, world is reversed. instead, in his I used to have a '50, not merely do the images appear precreated, but the artist expects us, rather than himself, to contribute the imaginative values. He poses as the agent, not the author of the work.
In Lichtenstein, this even goes so far as to produce canvases which are great simulated copies of tabloid engraving, reproduced down to the enlarged dots of the ink screens. Echoes of Surrealism are contained in this self-effacement which is nevertheless so ostentatious. One recalls Dali and his concept of the dream postcard, and even Blake, who considered himself merely God's secretary transcribing a heavenly vision. In any event, if the metaphor may be purposely obscured in the two artists just mentioned, or embarrassingly strained as in Oldenburg, there can be no doubt that all of them want the spectator eventually to triumph over it, and to recognize a special irony in their mock disguises - the responsibility behind the irresponsibility.
This brings us to the question: to just what extent are their themes altered by these kinds of vision? Peter Saul, after all, depicts grafitti which are careful re-evocations - in oil paint - of the careless. He is a great homogenizer of imagery, and tosses together emblems of the supermarket, latrine, and comic books, none of which, and here is the rub, would occasion a second glance if they weren't painted with an irritating excellence and organized so interestingly.
Dine is even more shamelessly sensual as he gives us his meaningless illustrations, his ties and coats, which are not even symbols. (If there is a general rule underlying the new iconography it is that there is no focus, no selectiveness about it. Anything goes, just as anything goes on the street.) With Oldenburg, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist, not to speak of Robert Indiana, the spectator's nose is practically rubbed into the whole pointless cajolery of our hardsell, sign dominated culture. (A recent painting by Joan Jacobs, Ripe U S.A., has the same effect, although her general interests are elsewhere.) Oldenburg may even be said to comment on the visual indigestibility of our environment by his inedible plaster and enamel cakes and pies. And Robert Watts flippantly insults the trivia of day to day living by modifying a U.S. Postage stamp machine so that it issues faintly pornographic stamps. With the exception of the latter, who is too much of a chameleon to classify, the new artists fall into two camps: the charmers and The trouble with the former is to determine whether the seductive surfaces are incidental to the coarse imagery, or vice versa; and with the latter, whether one derives any pleasure from knowing that others, too, have felt the tormenting and biting quality of the American urban scape. But the probability of discovering their overall attitude to American experience is obstructed by their speaking farcically in tongues, as if, somehow, we were the witnesses of a demonic Pentecost of hipsters. Thus, Dine and Rosenquist and Lichtenstein address us as if we were children, and they, condescending adults, while Oldenburg and Saul pretend to be the children to our elders. The elaborate sarcasm of these projections confuses and mystifies their total handling of the problem of disgust - for no one knows whether there are essentially pictorial reasons for the new form, whether it is, perhaps, a dialogue with Pirandello (or Ionesco) now transposed to the realm of visual art, or whether, finally, they are in subversive collusion with Americana, while pleading the cause of loyalty to high art and a new beauty.
Yet, concerning that which is artistically new in this work, there is surprisingly little to say. On one hand, you have the injection of merchandising and "direct mail" techniques into art, a phenomenon much more sinister than the corresponding influence of de Stijl and the Bauhaus upon store fronts and display windows several years ago. And on the other, these curious and rather desperate impersonations, of which I spoke. For the rest, particularly the aspect of metaphor, there is a distinguished pedigree which may be worth commenting upon, for a moment.
When Rosenquist paints a metallic scoop of ice cream, or Dine a flesh coloured tie, for instance, they are pulling down magical curtains over identity which Magritte had been "photographing" all during the fifties. And when Lichtenstein edges a contour, he follows in the footsteps of Stuart Davis, Richard Lindner, and Léger, who stands paternally over the whole mechanization of line, as well as the metallic shadow occasionally to be seen in Rosenquist. Then too, Oldenburg's plaster food is related to Picasso's famous charaded edible, The Class of Absinthe, but where the Picasso had a real spoon under the wooden sugar, the American attacks the same problem less humorously. I would also mention, in the more immediate surroundings, affinities the new artists have with Jasper Johns (who should be sulking over all this), Louise Nevelson, Cy Twombly, and Arman.
With all their more or less good company, however, there is a moral dilemma implicit in these latest vulgarities which is completely lacking in, say, their great precursor, Davis. It would be erroneous, for example, to imagine them quite as dedicated to pictorial self-sufficiency, to sheer energy of form and composition, as he. On the contrary, they depend too much on the repulsiveness of their imagery, so that artists as naturally desirous of recognition as they are, "hardsell" the public by means only of hardsell. Oldenburg has even cleverly fronted these activities with a "store," where you can buy his disagreeable pastries at "slightly inflationary prices." (One good way to starve.) Hence, there is a curious, frank admission of chicanery among them, that does not necessarily succeed in becoming honest. Nor are they any the more decent crooks with respect to the central idea - kitsch. Are we supposed to regard our popular signboard culture with greater fondness or insight now that we have Rosenquist? Or is he exhorting us to revile it, that is, to do what has come naturally to every sane and sensitive person in this country for years. If the first, the intent is pathological, and if the second dull.
The truth is, the art galleries are being invaded by the pin-headed and contemptible style of gum chewers, bobby soxers, and worse, delinquents. Not only can't I get romantic about this, I see as little reason to find it appealing as I would an hour of rock and roll into which has been inserted a few notes of modern music. Only works of the most exquisite wittiness, such as a few I saw at the Dine, Watts, and Saul shows, escape the debacle. But I fear very much for their authors in the future. In the meantime, save us from the "uncharmers," or permutations thereof, the Rosensteins or Oldenquists to come!
Art International, March 1962: 35-36
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